In industrial fluoroscope nondestructive testing, the X-ray tube and fluoroscope are sometimes located in a room separate from the human technician; the walls of the room are of thick concrete or lead lined to protect him/her from harmful X-rays. This presents a problem in that the human technician is unable to see the test object; he/she has difficulty in remotely manipulating the test object or adjusting the fluoroscope equipment. The present invention proposes the addition of a television camera in the X-ray room to target on the area between the X-ray tube and fluoroscope, thereby providing desired information on the tube-test object spacing and the tubefluoroscope spacing without requirement for the technician to actually enter the room. The television camera is cableconnected to a television receiver at the technician station outside the X-ray room.
Television camera usefulness is augmented by the addition of a small mirror located near the X-ray tube to reflect into the camera an image of the external surface of the test object being irradiated by the X-ray beam. This provides the human technician with visual information on the external surface of the test object which he can correlate with test object internal structure information provided by the X-ray. The human technician therefore has greater assurance that the X-ray is beamed through the intended portion of the object. The aforementioned video recorder can be actuated to provide a permanent record of internal test object defects and corresponding external appearance of the test object optically aligned with the defect.
The invention described herein may be manufactured, used, and licensed by or for the Government for governmental purposes without payment to me of any royalty thereon.